Box Grabs USD 150M; Plans to Go Public

Box, a file-storage and content cloud management firm has secured USD 150 million at a valuation of USD 2.4 billion. The round was led by investors TPG and Coatue Management. Recently, it had raised 11 rounds of investment viz. USD 100 million in Series F round, USD 150 million in Series E, USD 129 million in Series D, USD 15 million in Series C, USD 6 million in Series B, USD 1.5 million in Series A, USD 12.2 million in an unknown round and USD 350K in angel investment.

The latest round brings the total capital of the firm is USD 564.1 million. The company aims to utilize the raised funds to keep growing.

Previously, Box filed to go public, with its S-1 document providing rapid revenue growth but now it waits for favorable IPO winds. In 2012, it had revenue growth of USD 59 million expanded upto USD 124 million in 2013.

California-Headquartered Box was launched in 2005 by CFO Dylan Smith and CEO Aaron Levie. It provides more than 8 million users with secure cloud content management & collaboration and consisting of 950 employees in its team. The company said their platform, “allows personal and commercial content to be accessible, sharable, and storable in any format from anywhere.”

Tech Crunch says: The company is widely expected to update its S-1 filing in short order, detailing its fiscal first-quarter results.

Box’s IPO was filed, but never launched as the company ran face first into declining market sentiment. Other companies that have recently gone public have priced modestly, or had a history of GAAP profits. Box, presumably, wants to price aggressively.

The fresh capital will allow Box to put off an offering until it deems the market ready. How long that will take will likely hinge on its updated filing — if Box can show strong revenue growth and slowing losses, investors may be ready to tie the knot soon. If Box shows quick growth, and still-widening losses, it could be problematic for the cloud-based company.

Box faces competition from young companies like Dropbox and giants alike. The cloud storage space is among the hottest fronts of the larger platform wars, and Box wants to keep growing.